By Prashant Sethi, reporting from Ficci-Frames 2006, Mumbai.
Viren Popli, Senior Vice President, Star India Pvt Ltd
There are three models to be looked at for the digitisation of content. They are mainly business to business (B2B), consumer to consumer (C2C) and business to consumer (b2C). Out of these, the major challenge lies with b2c, mainly in convincing the consumer.
The consumer is confused when it comes to service and technology, such as - how many devices should I buy, which ones should I buy, which connection should I use, which provider should I go with and so on. Then there are price issues like -which package to choose and so on. All this is just for the device and have nothing to do with content as yet.
When it comes to content, there are other questions like-€”can I understand the content and relate to it. (It is important to note here that in India only 7% of the population speaks English). The content owners have their own issues with digitisation. One is digitsation makes piracy easier. Then as new platforms are involved hence pricing for the new platform is one. Also how do we make money from the current platform as audience will move away from it. Again the cost of digitisation is very high and, of course, the management of digital rights and the fact that there is no standardisation of formats.
Owners of the pipes or the people who invest money are thinking on questions like which technology to invest in, how much will it cost to roll out this technology, how I build a business and how do I get subscribers. Also their greatest fear lies in ---What happens to the investment when a new technology is brought into the market.
T N Prabhu, Internet Group Director, Walt Disney
There is no dearth of content but what really is forcing us to think is to how to run this business. We can put digital content on TV, mobiles etc, and each of these platform has different consumption, but only mobile as a platform is making money. This could mainly be because of the customer’s mindset is to pay for their content on mobile.
The real challenge is in providing content in different languages. As India is very wide-spread, every 300 km of distance the language changes. With respect to the digital media this poses as a great challenge. On the other hand, IVR has been successful because of this very difference in language.
The content that has to be seriously looked at is music, movie and gaming. Currently there is no set pattern that we can follow, hence we have to find what the consumer is interested in and then take it that way. But that is a long process and the attention span of the consumer is very small.
Challenge is also to provide passive interaction. Gaming is really picking up and the next set of audience is the gaming audience. We have to make money in the short time of attention that we get; hence we have to be sure of what we are putting in. India is a very large market and more importantly it’s a volume market, also but the target audience we are catering to is very impatient.